50 Energy Books

Green Energy for a Billion Poor: How Grameen Shakti Created a Winning Model for Social Business by Nancy Wimmer Main Points: "Grameen" means rural. "Shakti" means energy or force of power flowing through. Shakti also means "the Divin Mother" or female energy. In 1976, Mohammad Yunus loaned $27 to forty-two people to start their own small businesses. This opened the world's eyes to the genius of micro loans. Thirty years later his Grameen bank boasts over 7 million borrowers and a 99% loan repayment rate. Yunus was teaching at a University in Chittagong in Bangladesh when the country was going through a famine. He noticed the money lending principles and how harsh they are. He started taking the loans on behalf of other people, and started loaning that money out to others. So he created the Grameen Bank. Every month they are opening 40, 50, 60 branches and every month they are disbursing $60-70 million. In 2006, Yunus earned the Nobel Peac...

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart Main Points: What is Cradle to Cradle ?  Cradle to Cradle is a design concept inspired by nature, in which products are created according to the principles of an ideal circular economy. This differentiates Cradle to Cradle from conventional recycling and the concept of eco-efficiency. It is about eco-effectiveness and goes beyond conventional sustainability tools and approaches, which primarily show the negative influence of humans on the environment. ( EPEA ) Design is the first signal of human intention. What are our intentions? What would our intentions be as a species, now that we are the dominant species? It isn't stewardship or dominion debate.  Guardian: How can we secure local society, create world peace, and save the environment? Commerce: How do we generate prosperity?  Design: How do we love all the children of all species for all time? Current design ha...

Creating Climate Wealth by Jigar Shah Main Points : How do we take the power of capitalism and channel it in a way that is constructive? Capitalism is about getting to a democratized version of it. Some of the utility companies and the coal companies are running as virtual monopolies- secured rail rights and their individual mining rights. Set of companies are selling infrastructure $1 million at a time, not $1 billion- this is democratization of capitalism. In the climate change movement, when you are putting solar on rooftops, putting fleets of EV's in cities, or low tech in agriculture you are selling consumers on projects $1 million/time.   Before SunEdison : Jigar grew up in a small town in rural Illinois. People substitute capital with labor- mow their own lawn, because they don't have the means to pay people $300/week. Jigar's dad was a doctor in Rock Falls, Illinois and went through entrepreneurial ventures- money was tight and tough decisions needed to...

Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future by Professor Daniel Sperling, Founding Director & Professor, Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis; Board member of California Air Resources Board Main Points: Intelligent vehicle and highway systems (IVHS)  1991- Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis is founded   Define “revolution”: a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something and a changeover in use or preference, especially in technology.    Three Revolutions:  1.) Electrification  a. Enabler: 2008 better batteries/power electronics, 2010 Nissan Leaf, and 2012 Tesla Model S.  b. Goal: Electric vehicles  c. History: 1990- California adopts a zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate to curb air pollution blanketing Los Angeles. California amped up these mandates in 2012 to reach 15% penetration.   2.) Shared Use  a. Enabler: ...

Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Utility System By Richard F. Hirsh Main Points: Richard Hirsh got into energy consumption when he was working with Virginia legislators for the state. Wanted to discover the link between economic growth and electricity- do we need to build more powerplants? The power companies have been saying that growth in electricity has coincided with growth in GDP since the end of WWII. He has a masters in physics and a PhD in the History of Science. Growth in Energy Consumption was a positive trend of American culture from 10 quads in 1900 to about 70 quads in 2000. Gross national product have increased with energy consumption hand-in-hand. Economic growth was a good thing- more jobs, higher material standards, reflective superiority of a market economy. GDP/GNP became proxies for prosperity, abundance, superiority, and progress.  School of cultural anthropology arose in the 1940's from the work of Leslie Wh...

Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen, Nasa Goddard physicist       Most famous for his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change. History of James Hansen: Grew up as a tenant farmer and attended University of Iowa under the supervision of Professor Van Allen who built instruments for the first US satellites. There was intense microwave radiation on Venus : did this mean that Venus had an ionosphere or was Venus very hot? The Soviet Venera spacecraft was that Venus was 900 degrees Fahrenheit that was kept hot by a thick CO2 atmosphere.  Hansen became the PI of a mission to Venus that took a picture of Venus' sulfuric smog. Shortly thereafter, Hansen resigned on the Venus experiment and focused on Earth's climate change. In 1981, he published an article in Science  magazine that 0.4 degree Celsius warming was consistent with the increase in CO2. And that the increase would continue and be greater than the noise of changing weathe...

Megawatts and Megatons by Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak Main Points: Georges Charpak won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber".  Richard L. Garwin is the author of the first hydrogen bomb design. Purpose of the book: indicate where we are and where we might be in the case of nuclear power supplying power to society. Taking into account other sources of energy and taking into account safety, economy, etc. History :  1934, Enrico Fermi found radioactivity when they investigated uranium with slow neutron capture. In 1938 they had discovered fission of uranium, with energy 30x that of regular radioactive decay. The dream of Leo Szilard of 1932 was in sight when they realized that an absorption of a neutron resulted into the emission of several neutrons. You could have a neutron chain reaction.  First application of nuclear fission was achieved in...